PhD Scholarship in Bioinformatics at the Queensland Brain Institute, Australia

The Mowry group has currently two PhD projects available. Two PhD scholarships are available in the area of psychiatric genetics and second-generation- sequencing:

Project 1: Investigating the role of micro-RNAs in Schizophrenia using Second Generation DNA Sequencing The successful applicant will seek to identify rare and novel microRNAs in brain tissue. This involves comparing miRNA expression in multiple brain tissues of SZ-affected versus unaffected controls by using second generation DNA sequencing to identify the target mRNA transcripts of novel miRNA’s that are differentially expressed between SZ-affected and –unaffected samples. The following functional analysis aims at investigating the role of miRNA’s in the etiology of SZ.

Project 2: A systematic screen for schizophrenia-associated rare variants in population isolates from Sarawak and southern India . The successful applicant will investigate the contribution of rare variants to SZ in two population isolates from Sarawak (Iban) and southern India (Tamil Brahmin) that are the subject of current GWAS in the Mowry lab. This involves the systematical re-sequencing of the best candidate SZ regions identified in the Iban and Tamil Brahmin GWAS, as well as strongly replicated SZ regions from studies in other populations.